Archive for the ‘Twebinar’ Category

For the last 14 months Awareness has hosted a series of free webinars focused on educating the market on the benefits of social media marketing. Last week’s session featured author Lon Safko discussing the “5 Steps to Social Media Implementation“. The session itself started off with some technical difficulties that we were able to work out after about 10-15 minutes. Even though we started a bit late, the session went very well and, for the most part, those who attended were satisfied with the content of the session.

There is always (and I do mean, always) someone who leaves the session unhappy. We do our best to feature top notch speakers and content as well as strive to consistently manage the sessions in a professional manner. That said, every once in a while we run into a hiccup that causes a delay or, in one instance, a cancellation. What continues to surprise me is the response we get when these issues arise. Take for example the voicemail below that we received from a woman who had some issues accessing the session (she will remain nameless).

I completely understand that a delay or broken link is frustrating. This is especially frustrating when you have set aside time to attend one of our sessions. I have been on the other side and it really is annoying. That said, this voice mail is just funny. Not so much for what she says but because of her reaction. Really, I would expect this from my 2 year old, not from a business professional looking to gain more knowledge.

For those wondering, we did respond with a kind apology and helped her fix the broken link which was part of an issue with her email. We also refunded her admission fee for the session.

In 2009 Awareness hosted 19 webinars featuring a wide range of marketing topics presented by a host of social media thought leaders. These sessions grew in popularity over the course of the year, attracting thousands of viewers and featuring entertaining and thought provoking conversations. There was a ton of value in every session and here is my list of the Top 5 Sessions of 2009 (along with some honorable mentions):

What could top a rock-star panel streamed live from the floor of the Inbound Marketing Summit at Gillette Stadium? This session was particularly exciting for me for a couple of reasons. First, it was live streamed, which adds a completely new dimension (as well as a new level of stress) to a traditional webinar. Not only does it mean people tuning in are watching you instead of a set of PowerPoint slides, but it also means there are a ton of technological hurdles you need to consider. Luckily, Matthew Mamet and the video gurus at Visible Gains stepped up and handled the technology component. Second, it featured an all-star panel of individuals that I have a lot of respect for in the social media space: Jason Falls, Paul Gillin, C.C. Chapman, Chris Brogan, and Brian Solis. As the host, it put a ton of pressure on me to ask good questions, facilitate good conversations and to make sure I give each presenter enough air time. In the end, we had a great conversation, shared some interesting case studies and had a deep discussion on metrics and social media ROI.

Scott Monty, Ford’s Social Media Strategy, From Zero to 60I learned more from Scott Monty in 45 minutes than some people I talk to for hours. It’s rare for a company the size of Ford to provide such a detailed look inside their social media strategy. Paraphrasing Woody Allen, where he said ”90% of life is just showing up,” Scott Monty, Head of Social Media at Ford Motor Company shared with us how Ford subscribes to the Woody Allen philosophy of social media which is “90% of social media is just showing up.” Its about being where people expect you to be. Showing up is easy, its the other part that is hard and is often where the majority of corporations fail. Well Ford is certainly doing more than just showing up. With Scott to guide them, the corporation that has experienced its share of challenges, is now seeing significant success in their social media efforts through their many campaigns. Proof of this success could possibly be attributed to the company’s recently posted profits of nearly $1 billion in its third quarter.Here is a link to the slides and recording (written by Christine Major)

Larry Weber, “Marketing on the Social Web”I have probably seen Larry Weber speak 5 or 6 times and I have read all his books (”The Provocateur”, “Marketing to the Social Web‘ and most recently, “Sticks & Stones“). I continue to be amazed at how much I learn from him and I continue to be a fan of how he thinks. This session set a couple of records for Awareness sessions. First is was the session with the highest pre-registration – over 3000 people signed up to tune in. Second, it’s our most downloaded set of slides on slideshare (currently has 11,500 views, 118 favorites and 42 embeds). Finally, this was one of our most active conversations on Twitter. We received hundreds of comments and questions throughout the session leaving me scrambling to keep up. I said this on the call and I’ll say it again, if you haven’t read “Marketing to the Social Web” pick it up, its a great read from a guy with a ton of insight on the space.

Mitch Joel, “Six Pixels of Separation”I had the chance to read Mitch’s book, “Six Pixels of Separation“, the weekend prior to the webinar and had tons of my own questions I wanted to ask. My only disappointment was that because we received so many questions from listeners on Twitter I never had the chance to get to any of my questions. Mitch spent time discussing how the world of new media and how to market with a brand-new perspective that is driven by compelling results. The smarter entrepreneurs and top executives are leveraging digital channels to get their voice “out there”-connecting with others, becoming better community citizens, and, ultimately, making strategic business moves that are increasing revenue, Awareness, and overall success in the marketplace-without the support of traditional mass media.

(Tie) Jason Falls, “My Agency Doesn’t Get Social Media… Who Does?” & C.C. Chapman, “Passion is Contagious”
Both of these sessions we great because, first, the content rocked. They weren’t the typical sessions talking about dialog, transparency, and general social media B.S. , they both talked about actually things you can use in your business and gave great advice. Second, neither session needed a deck, etc. We could have had a discussion for 45 minutes without relying on decks. Both C.C. and Jason are expert presenters who have great experiences and backgrounds, but more important is they are great guys who are very easy to talk with.Jason led a discussion called “My Agency Doesn’t Get Social Media… who does???“ and focused on the successes and failures of social media within marketing agencies. He talked about the right questions to ask agencies as you engage them to define and manage your social media strategy and, most importantly, what to look for as you select an agency.

I have known C.C. Chapman for a couple of years. We first met when we were both speakers at the New Marketing Summit (now the Inbound Marketing Summit). Actually, I think our first “in person” meeting was just before I interviewed him for New Marketing T.V. What’s really interesting is that while we both graduated from Bentley University (granted it was at different times – C.C. is WAY older than me ) and shared several friends (shout out to @bostonsarah), we first connected through social media. It’s true, social media actually works! The first time we actually “spoke” was months before we met in person when we began chatting on Twitter and Facebook. Since our first meeting at NMS I have seen him speak 5 or 6 times and I always learn something new from him. This session was no exception.

(Photo Credit: Jason Falls)

Honorable Mentions:

Chris Brogan, “Trust Agents“
This will go down as the webinar that almost wasn’t. Our original session was going to be a traditional webinar delivered by Chris focusing on his new book, “Trust Agents“. Unfortunately, there were some technical issues and we were forced to cancel the session (want the detailed story, click here). The good news is we were able to coordinate a live session with Chris few weeks later. The session streamed live from the Visible Gains offices in Waltham. It’s always great chatting with Chris and this session was no exception. He has some great case studies and really interesting insights on how to use social media as part of your marketing mix and how to grow vibrant communities. Check out the session here.

Rachel Happe, “The Community Maturity Model”Rachel Happe and Jim Storer of The Community Roundtable along with Adam Zawel, XPC Community Facilitator at Palladium Group presented “The Community Maturity Model.” During the webinar, Rachel brought us through the different phases of The Community Maturity Model while Adam shared his first-hand experiences building and managing Palladium Group’s community. According to Rachel, community is about the relationships between the people in your community and not just a content-rich website (the “audience” Brogan referred to). It is these relationships that drive engagement, passion and long term relationships. Reminds me of Ford Motor Company and their success in using social media to drive that passion for its vehicles.

We have some great speakers already lined up for 2010! Check out the latest and greatest schedule at our website. Got ideas for a speaker or topic? DM me @bostonmike or email me mike.lewis(at)awarenessnetworks.com

Is it important to be connected? Mitch Joel, Author of Six Pixels of Separation and President of TwistImage believes we no longer live in a world of six degrees of separation. In fact, we’re now down to only six pixels of separation, which changes everything we know about doing business.

Last week we had the chance to sit down for a session with Mitch who discussed how the world of new media and how to market with a brand-new perspective that is driven by compelling results. The smarter entrepreneurs and top executives are leveraging digital channels to get their voice “out there”-connecting with others, becoming better community citizens, and, ultimately, making strategic business moves that are increasing revenue, awareness, and overall success in the marketplace-without the support of traditional mass media.

It’s was great chatting with Mitch and I, personally, learned a ton during this session. He has great insight and case studies and has a unique way of simplifying social media marketing in a way the makes it easy to understand the benefits as well as how to get started. We talked a little bit about the future of social media, how to build vibrant online communities and how marketers can be successful using social media. The recording is below, I hope you enjoy it.

The conversation on Twitter was also terrific. Here are my top 10 observations from some of the people joining the conversation on Twitter:

@elysa: 6 things you can do RIGHT now: 1)acceptance 2)digital augments not instead of traditional marketing #awarenessinc (cont) 3)every opt is chance to build/share/grow 4)open up and share more 5)it’s about your attitude not your age #awarenessinc

@garyasanchez: brands need to create online strategy: why are they on twitter rather than just being on twitter – build community! #awarenessinc

@RonArden: #awarenessinc The shiny new objects are just a bunch of tools. You need to decide what to do with these tools to make them useful.

Last Thursday I hosted a panel live from the Inbound Marketing Summit titled: “End the Social Media Hype“. It was particularly exciting for me for a couple of reasons. First, it featured an all-star panel of individuals that I have a lot of respect for in the social media space: Jason Falls, Paul Gillin, C.C. Chapman, Chris Brogan, and Brian Solis. Second, it was the only panel to be streamed live from IMS – thanks to our friends at Visible Gains (formerly PermissionTV). We had a great conversation, shared some interesting case studies and had a deep discussion on metrics and social media ROI.

I want to thank all the panelists for their time, honesty and insights during the session, Visible Gains for providing the streaming technology and Justin levy from New Marketing Labs for helping to pull everything together.

Finally, a special thanks to Matthew Mamet and the team at Visible Gains for helping to bring this session together on such short notice! As you view the highlights notice that the video has been edited to focus on the areas that are most interesting to the viewer. This is both cool and beneficial as is makes for an awesome viewer experience. If you are looking for software to support streaming video, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to check them out.

A couple of weeks back we conducted a live, streaming session with Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs and Co-Author of Trust Agents with Julien Smith. It’s always great chatting with Chris and this session was no exception. He has some great case studies and really interesting insights on how to use social media as part of your marketing mix and how to grow vibrant communities.

A special thanks to Matthew Mamet and our friends at PermissionTV for helping to bring this session together on short notice! As you view the highlights of the session notice that the video has been edited to focus on the areas that are most interesting to the viewer. This is both cool and beneficial as is makes for an awesome viewer experience. If you are looking for software to support streaming video, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to check them out.

Wednesday was a tough afternoon for me. I’m sure many of you were probably following the twitter stream for #awarenessinc Wednesday afternoon and have some sense of what happened but for those that didn’t, here’s a summary of what went down:

For the last few months we have been promoting a webinar with Chris Brogan for a discussion about his new book “Trust Agents“. Needless to say the demand for the event was extraordinary. Over 1200 people registered and I was personally excited to have the chance to chat with Chris about the book. Chris and I spoke several times that morning to discuss the slides, flow and logistics and had worked out every last detail. I started the session 30 minutes early, uploaded the slides and walked through the logistics with our Webex producer who was overseeing the call. I typically use producers for our events so they can provide the recording and manage any tech issues that may arise. This is particularly important for me for this event because we were dealing with a very large crowd and I wanted to make sure everything went smoothly.

Everything was progressing on plan until Chris tried to join the conference bridge 15 minutes prior to the call. He was having trouble dialing into the phone line and connecting to the Webex meeting manager. We attempted several different methods for joining Chris to the bridge (including having him call my cell and putting it on speaker phone to broadcast on the bridge) and nothing seemed to work. While Webex scrambled to figure out the issue with Chris’ line the situation steamrolled at 2PM ET, when a flood of people attempted to join the session.

Apparently, Webex was experiencing an issue that resulted in everyone getting removed from the line the moment they dialed-in. People were also having difficulty joining the session over the computer. We were notified that the Webex tech support team was aware of the problem and was working towards a resolution. Chris and I immediately began tweeting, emailing and chatting with the individuals attempting to join the call. We tried in vain to get the call started for over 30 minutes and had no luck. Once it became clear that issue could not be resolved, we decided to reschedule and notify everyone of the new date/time once we had it.

We learned a lot during the session just from following the Twitter stream. Most importantly, it emphasized the importance of keeping members in the loop while we were attempting to write the ship. The conversation was great and in the words of @gillat “I think that we proved that even though the webinar was canceled, we still had fun creating a conversation on twitter #awarenessinc”.

A couple of things I’d like to clear up. First, Webex has planned a meeting with me some of their execs today to discuss how we can make this right. And, when I say “make this right” I don’t mean for myself, Chris or Awareness – but for the people who registered and spent time waiting on the line. (Special thanks to @faithlegendre for helping to facilitate this). Second, while unfortunate, tech issues do happen and I hope people understand that Webex still offers a quality product and service. Let me be 100% clear, in our opinion this was a serious issue that needs to be dealt with but, while unfortunate, we are still working with Webex on a resolution. Are we upset? Yes. But they heard the chatter on Twitter and will work to correct the issue. I am confident of this. I plan on keeping everyone posted on this process as it plays out. Stay tuned for details…

On behalf of the team at Awareness, I want to personally apologize to everyone who registered and was on the line waiting for Chris and I. Not so much for the tech issue but for not responding to every tweet/note that came in during the session. To be transparent, we were both working hard to try and think of other alternatives and it was difficult for us to manage the overwhelming response. We appreciate you patience and we think we have a plan in place to make things right.

The good news is we HAVE rescheduled the session for September 9 at 2PM ET. We are working with PermissionTV to make this a live, streaming session. We will be proving details on this session by Monday at the absolute latest. In addition, we will be providing a new eBook to everyone who registered. This was written by Chris and was scheduled to be released to the public in late September. We are finishing the book now and will have it our the attendees who registered for the previous session on Monday as well.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for registering and taking some time to wait on the line to hear from Chris. The audience on our webinars consistently ROCK and we always appreciate hearing their feedback (whether good, or bad).

Feel free to post any questions or voice your frustration here. You can also email me directly at mike.lewis(AT)awarenessnetworks.com or chat with me on Twitter @bostonmike.

Thank you for your interest in the Awareness Inc., “Trust Agents: Webinar with Chris Brogan” web event held on Wednesday, August 26, 2009.

On behalf of Cisco-WebEx, please accept our apologies for the telephony issues during this Awareness Inc. sponsored event. We strive to make each of our customer’s events successful and apologize for the issue. The telephony issue was not the fault of Awareness Inc. and Cisco-WebEx will continue to work closely with Awareness Inc. to ensure that all future Cisco-WebEx events will provide a high-quality experience.

Had a great webinar yesterday with Adam Broitman, founder and ringleader at Circ.us. I met Adam for the first time at last year’s New Marketing Summit (now the Inbound Marketing Summit) when we sat down for an interview on the state of new marketing (click here to view it). Adam has great insight into the agency world (spending some time at Digitas, Morpheus and Crayon) and has a very unique (some may say “innovative”) way of thinking about marketing and social media. He’s also a lot of fun to chat with and, as you we see in the recording below, he’s both an entertaining and thought provoking speaker.

Before you view the recording and slides of the session (both are available below), here are the top eleven tweets form yesterday’s webinar highlighting some of Adam’s insights (they are in no particular order):

@abelniak: scary stat: 40% of the major corporations that existed in America in 1975 no longer exist today.

I had the pleasure of hosting a twebinar this week with Jason Falls of Doe-Anderson titled “Social Media: Your Agency Doesn’t Get It… Who Does?” I met Jason briefly for the first time this year at SXSW but only had a few minutes to connect with him in the blogger lounge before we both ran off to sessions. I have followed him on his blog and Twitter for a lot longer and am a big fan.

I was particularly excited about this session because the content the content is compelling and Jason is an expert on the subject having worked both with and for a host of marketing agencies. There are not many people with experience on both sides of the fence and I was anxious to hear his thoughts. Below are links to the slides, video recording and podcast of the session but before you view anything, here are my top 10 favorite quotes/learning’s from the session with Jason:

Martell Home Builders – A great social media case study: Local contractors have their project managers update project status on Twitter so customers can see where they are, how the project is going and provide a way to contact them. An excellent example of using the social web to improve customer service. What a great use of Twitter!

Note to “Classically Trained” marketers: Social Media is the antithesis of advertising. Dialogue is lost on classically trained marketers and it’s difficult to teach classically trained marketers the new way of doing things.

On Interactive Marketing at large agencies: Interactive is an add-on most of the time. Many think interactive, but struggle with integration.

Agency outsourcing: Most agencies will say they can do anything, and then go find a partner who can help them pull it off. If transparency and honesty are the most important thing in social media, agencies need to up front with clients when outsourcing services.

Questions to ask social media agencies: What is the strategy behind your recommendations? What social media mistakes have you made and what did you learn from them? Do they have blogs? Are your employees on twitter? Can you share case studies? Who does strategy, who does execution?

Note to self: Marketing “people” need to understand math

On B2B vs B2C: There is no B2B or B2C, it’s all about P2P: People to People.

Biggest challenge brands face: There are conversations happening everywhere and most brands don’t have the right people to manage social media.

About Twitter: Twitter is not a platform for marketing, however it can be used for it. It’s a platform for conversation.

On ROI: ROI is easy to measure in social media, if your social media programs are aligned with clear business goals.

I have only known C.C. Chapman for a couple of years. We first met when we were both speakers at the New Marketing Summit (now the Inbound Marketing Summit). Actually, I think our first “in person” meeting was just before I interviewed him for New Marketing T.V. What’s really interesting is that while we both graduated from Bentley University (granted it was at different times – C.C. is WAY older than me ;-)) and shared several friends (shout out to @bostonsarah), we first connected through social media. You see, the first time we actually “spoke” was months before we met in person when we began chatting on Twitter and Facebook. C.C. said it best during the session “I guess this social networking thing really works.” Since our first meeting at NMS I have seen him speak 5 or 6 times and I always learn something new from him. It was great connecting with him last week and I hope you get some great insight from the interview below (slides, recording and a podcast of the Q&A session are included in this post):

Slides from Building Participation in Your Community: Passion is Contagious:

About Mike

Mike is an entrepreneur & marketer that helps B-to-B technology companies realize the benefits of social marketing as a vehicle to improve awareness and generate demand. I am a husband, father of two, an author, a passionate Boston sports fan, and a social media geek.